Mist, Madness, and a Crow
by Rakuen's Tears
Summary: Sasuke has returned to Konoha, and there is something horribly, horribly wrong about this. One-shot. Not what it seems.


**Author's notes:** Weird, angsty little thing I wrote almost in all one sitting. Please note this was written over two years ago, so please excuse any continuity errors. Read to the end before making a judgment on characterization—there's a twist waiting for you!

**Mist, Madness, and a Crow****  
**

Humans only question reality when they wish to escape from it.

---

Truth be told, it was not the knock on the door that woke Naruto from that nightmare. The real thing that sent him sputtering up from his sleep was the silence.

---

Rain fell for three whole days and three whole nights in Konoha. It was not a piddling, dawdling rain, either—but, rather, an assault of water worthy of the greatest nations of the world and perhaps a smattering of divine intervention, too. Streams (almost rivers, really) adorned the streets of Konoha like ribbons of acid—eroding away at the red clay as though the streams were trying to cut canyons between the buildings.

Naruto would have been bored if he didn't secretly and quietly consider the cacophony of a storm almost as worthy a companion as a human being. Seventeen years old though he was, he held within him still an appreciation of the rain in the sense that it had been there for him when the villagers had not. When he was young, before the labor of the Ninja Academy entered his life and gave him something to do during all those hours alone, he used to hope for storms to crop up and keep him company.

To him, they seemed to have a life all their own. Somewhere between the rain, the thunder, and the lightning, there was almost tangible emotion that could be heard and seen. Naruto would perch on his windowsill or sprawl out like a cat on his bed and just…listen.

Sometimes the rain struck up with joyous, almost musical, laughter that rattled and danced on the rooftops. The laughter was crisp—the rain clear and large like marbles and the sky usually filled with white sunlight and pearly clouds. Other times the clouds boiled with anger—black and twisted and coiling like the smoke of an unimaginably immense forest fire. The rain, then, growled and hissed and roared with malice—the thunder sounded like a war drum, and lightning would gnash across the sky like the jagged teeth of a shark. Other times the rain was like an old, sad friend who couldn't stop crying over some past woe or another. The rain was thin, then, and leaked off the rooftops of Konoha like tears, the clouds despondent and still like sheep left out in the rain.

Sometimes, rarely, Naruto couldn't understand what the rain was saying. This was usually when it was misty out and the rain lingered down from the sky like water from a spray bottle. That was what he thought of as 'sticky rain'—the tiny beads that somehow ended up soaking you regardless of whether or not you had an umbrella. It was clingy, muggy rain like the skin of a swamp creature. He didn't know what that rain meant. He didn't know at all.

Naruto had heard a great many different voices in the rain, but that night—and only that night—he heard a new voice among the familiar angry and sad ones.

Fear.

---

Naruto was having a nightmare when the rain just…stopped. It didn't fade out with a few last hiccups or sobs or hisses like it normally did. It just abruptly and completely stopped, and in the second that it did, Naruto jolted awake. His breathing was rough, cheeks streaked with the fresh trails of tears, and the presence of something vague and wrong still present from a dream.

A bird…?

For a second, a mere second, he thought he saw the shadow of a crow outside, but it snapped out of existence when he blinked, taking with it whatever scraps of nightmares remained in his consciousness.

That was when he heard the knocking.

Naruto glanced down at his alarm clock on the floor.

3 AM…? Who the hell would come knocking on his door at 3 AM?

He tried, at first, to ignore it in the hopes that it was just some sort of…something…that the wind had flopped against his door, but soon the knocking came again in a regular pattern of three knocks.

Naruto conceded defeat then. He pulled off his pajama hat, awkwardly slipped his feet into his slippers, and shuffled and shivered out of bed. "Okay, okay… I'm coming already!" he called, but not loudly enough for his guest, whoever they might be, to hear.

Slippers scuffing against the ground, he made his way to the door, grumbling the whole way, and then he unlocked it, and opened it slowly.

There, paler than a ghost and more mature, but clearly recognizable—

stood Sasuke.

At first, Naruto's eyes couldn't even comprehend what he was seeing as a whole.

He could see Sasuke's statuesque eyes upon him—gray and cold, as though they were made of stone. He could see the straight, drawn mouth, the greasy black hair, the pale skin that was the insipid color of the moon, a shirt that was off-white with the stains of blood and dirt upon it, and black pants. There was a splatter of brackish dried blood on Sasuke's cheek—it looked as though it could have been there for days or even weeks. He knew each of these was a part of Sasuke, but he couldn't seem to comprehend that there…standing right in front of him, was _Sasuke_. He couldn't comprehend that this was the boy he had grown up with, been on a team with, and, ultimately, the boy he had been betrayed by.

Hand on the doorknob, Naruto stood stiller than Sasuke, just gaping. Sasuke looked back at him expectantly, placing one hand on his hip and looking straight into Naruto's dumbfounded eyes.

Naruto didn't stir for a good minute. He remained where he was—staring, confused, and feeling as though there were a cold, clammy hand inside his chest clutching at his heart. After a long, tense minute, Naruto finally stuttered. "Sa… Sa…? _Sasuke_?"

Sasuke stared back at him silently.

"Y-you--! You bastard, why are you here?! What are you doing here? How…how did you get here?" Naruto suddenly burst, clenching his fist, which shook and trembled at his side. He paused in hope of an answer, but sputtered angrily and continued when he didn't receive even a blink, a breath, or a nod at his words. "I—I don't get it! What the hell do you think you're doing, standing here? Give me an answer!"

Sasuke continued to stare back at him silently, but slowly his eyes began to look more alive than they had before—seeming almost to contain a spark of morbid enjoyment. Behind him, the thick mist swirled and danced up from the ground like the ghosts of cranes, and Naruto wondered if he had fallen from one nightmare into another.

Naruto wasn't quite sure how to react when Sasuke placed his hand on Naruto's left shoulder and let it linger there for a moment. Naruto's guard rose along with his confusion, and an onslaught of emotion (fearhappinessangersadnessnostalgia) slayed all of Naruto's logical thought processes. Naruto grabbed Sasuke's hand—it was cold—and removed it from his shoulder, scowling.

"Seriously, Sasuke. I want answers, and I want them now," Naruto hissed. "I won't react to you until then. If you're just here to kill me, I'll gladly fight you again. Just say the word." His body tensed. "You won't win this time."

When Sasuke ignored him and began to walk towards him, Naruto watched him carefully like prey watches a predator. However, he became even more confused when Sasuke pushed past him into the doorway and entered his home. He considered pushing Sasuke back into the cold, misty streets of Konoha, or starting a fight right there because Sasuke wouldn't say anything and it made Naruto damn uncomfortable—but Naruto's curiosity overwhelmed his fear. Sasuke glanced around as though searching for something, and headed for Naruto's room. His steps were even—methodical and slow. Naruto followed, baffled and shaking and so lost in a flurry of thought and emotion and fear and that he literally had no idea what to do next.

Sasuke rooted around in Naruto's room for another three minutes, during which Naruto watched and wondered about his actions, until finally he paused as an 'ahh, here it is' look came into his eyes. He pulled a scroll off the ground—an empty one—and opened it up as he sat in a small area of Naruto's floor that wasn't covered in random items. Sasuke impatiently held out one of his hands toward Naruto, scoffing when Naruto didn't understand. Sasuke pointed, well, pointedly, at the blank expanse of the scroll, and Naruto produced a pen from the floor. Sasuke received the pen, frowned at the baffled Naruto for no apparent reason, and wrote in impeccably neat handwriting, "I'm not here to fight." Sasuke pointed at this phrase matter-of-factly, and looked up at Naruto, who read it quickly and was taken aback by the simple phrase.

"Then what are you here for?"

Sasuke shrugged in a way that was barely evident.

"Why don't you talk?"

Sasuke shrugged in a way that was barely evident.

"How long are you going to be here?"

Sasuke shrugged again, and looked pissed at Naruto for questioning him

Naruto's fear dissipated somewhat, then, and the strangeness and wonder of the fact that Sasuke was there—was back—was not trying to kill him any more rose up and clutched his whole body. He had been shaking involuntarily for some time now, but all the sudden, a shiver of awe moved over him like the shadows of clouds move over a landscape. He knew that Sasuke was a rotten bastard and a traitor to him and the whole village, and that just because he was back and claiming he didn't want to fight was not fully a reason to trust him (and thus vowed to keep his eye on Sasuke as carefully as he could), but still…

Did this mean he had won? Sasuke was back, even if it wasn't Naruto's doing, and that was significant, wasn't it? For a moment, Naruto wondered if he should go get Sakura as soon as he could, but he feared it to be a dream he'd wake from and, in the event the whole thing actually was real, didn't want to endanger her if it turned out Sasuke's intents weren't so pure after all. He felt a twinge of sadness upon realizing he'd have to hide Sasuke—at least for a while—but…he had his best friend back, and that was all that mattered, wasn't it?

Even amongst all the hope and anticipation and confusion he was going through, though, Naruto could sense something very, very wrong about this whole business. Sasuke was even paler than Naruto had ever seen him, and seemed cold to the touch. The blood splash on his cheek seemed like an old injury, which was suspicious—as Naruto knew Sasuke to be the sort of person who took good care of himself physically (though one could not say the same of his mental state). Wouldn't he have washed that away already?

In all honestly, Naruto began wondering if Sasuke had really snapped for good this time. What was up with the lack of speech? From what he had seen, it seemed as though Sasuke physically couldn't talk—it wasn't just him being a complete asshole. As he watched Sasuke wander dreamily out of his room, down the hall, and into his cramped dining room, Naruto noticed that Sasuke looked skinnier than usual and his clothing was splotched with stains and even torn in some places. Sasuke's facial expressions were more muted, and his usual arrogance had dissolved into what seemed to be a sense of withdrawal from the world. His eyes looked like a puddle of frozen oil—lost, cold, and uncaring.

Perhaps something unspeakable had happened…? Something had messed Sasuke up in ways Naruto couldn't comprehend, and Naruto wasn't even sure how to interact with Sasuke at this point. It had been four years, and he had no idea what had happened during that time. He figured it would probably be a while until he found anything out, if he ever found out anything at all, due to Sasuke's lack of speech and apparent reluctance to cooperate with anything Naruto did or said.

Naruto followed Sasuke back into the dining room, where Sasuke had seated himself at the table and was staring out the window at the white miasma. Naruto found it strange that he couldn't see anything of Konoha at all through the fog—and at the fact that Sasuke seemed to be staring at it so intently, it was as though the most interesting thing in the world was happening out there. Unsure of what else to do, Naruto filled a glass of water for Sasuke and set it on the table in front of him. Sasuke took it without even looking at Naruto and sipped on it politely. His eyes were still fixed on the fog.

Naruto's eye sought out the clock as Sasuke continued to sit there aimlessly. 4 AM. It had been an hour. Naruto wasn't really tired, not after receiving this jolt to his system, but—to be honest—he had no idea what else to do other than to go to sleep and try to think of something to do, something to fill the silence between them, something to _think_ of the whole situation.

"Um…Sasuke? It's kind of late, I'm going to go to bed. You can sleep…uh, wherever you feel like sleeping. There's some blankets in the closet if you want to sleep." Naruto's nervousness clearly showed in his words, but Sasuke didn't even bother acknowledging what he had said.

Naruto padded back into his room, shut the door, and immediately locked it behind him. He knew a locked door would never, ever stop a skilled shinobi, but the ritual of locking it made him feel a little safer, anyway. As soon as it was closed, he collapsed against it, overwhelmed. He wanted to cry—to scream—to throttle Sasuke, and to hug him. He wanted to know why he had returned. He wanted to know what to do now. He sat there for a while in the utter silence, curled up against the door, head on his knees, breathing deeply to gain his composure. He choked once in an almost-sob and then managed to hold back the tears of frustration and happiness and sadness and anger, but couldn't stop the warmth that rushed to his face as a prelude to tears.

He gathered his emotions into a controllable bundle within him and crawled into bed. He took with him his kunai holster and placed it under his pillow. Just in case.

He didn't sleep at all for the rest of the night, however. He could do nothing but think and wonder and fear and…reminisce. At one point, he seriously started doubting the reality of it all and walked back out into the dining room just to confirm. Indeed, Sasuke was sleeping with his head and arms on the dining room table. His breathing was even and deep—he was honestly asleep. Naruto retrieved a blanket for him, and placed it over Sasuke's shoulders. In an act of astounding responsibility, Naruto also decided to grab Sasuke's water glass, as he had seen Sasuke finish the water off earlier.

When he got to removing the glass, however, Naruto discovered something that threw him even more into the depths of confusion.

The glass, which he knew Sasuke had finished earlier, was full again.

---

Naruto had always been a late sleeper (with the exception of when he was excited about something), so he was surprised to find Sasuke still sleeping when he woke up at noon. He debated waking him up, but realized it would just be more time to fill up with awkward silence. Therefore, Naruto decided to make himself some cereal for breakfast and make Sasuke some, too, just for whenever he happened to wake.

Naruto still couldn't see outside past the mist.

Sasuke did wake, eventually, and ate his cereal slowly. Sasuke's dispassionate responses to everything were suspect enough, but when Naruto left Sasuke alone for any more than a few minutes, he would notice out of the corner of his eye that Sasuke was smiling quietly to himself in a way that chilled Naruto to the bone. He'd just sit, hands intertwined under his chin, staring out the window, or at Naruto's houseplants, or at just nothing in particular and just grin to himself. Sasuke didn't smile—not very often, anyway. And if he did, it always had this particular egotism to it that wrote it off as more of a smirk. But here Sasuke was, smiling away. It wasn't quite a happy smile, but more of a…wicked, self-assured, but somehow vacant smile.

Again, Naruto collected Sasuke's bowl of cereal, and again, it was full as though he had never eaten it. At this point, Naruto was starting to get extremely creeped-out and quickly threw the whole cereal bowl into the sink without bothering to wash it.

Despite all of the strange happenings and Sasuke's bizarre demeanor switch, though, Naruto was relieved he was back. He wished Sasuke could be more like he was…well, before he betrayed him, and before he left, but he was willing to settle for having Sasuke there regardless of mental state—all in one piece, alive and safe in his apartment. He mostly left Sasuke alone, not knowing quite how to hold a conversation with a guy who didn't talk and who would hardly look him in the eye, but he stole glances at him every now and then to reassure himself that "Hey, it's really Sasuke. He's here, he's safe, and he's returned to Konoha—where he belongs." Sasuke mostly remained at the table, watching out the window for some unknown signal or at some scene no one else could see, but occasionally he would walk around Naruto's apartment, touching on random things or staring at his reflection bitterly in windows or mirrors.

By 4 PM, Naruto tired of ignoring Sasuke. He'd spent a while in his room attempting to study scrolls on some ancient jutsu, he'd made at least two batches of ramen (which Sasuke silently refused to eat), he'd read over some of the mission assignments for the next week, and he was tired of making excuses for not attempting communication with the silent, strange shinobi. At status quo, it was almost like having a ghost in the house, and Naruto didn't like it one bit.

Naruto pulled out a chair from his room and dragged it into the dining area—seating himself across from Sasuke, whose dull gray eyes had currently focused on Naruto's wall fan with almost mystical fascination.

"Oi, Sasuke," Naruto intoned, knocking on the table once to attract Sasuke's attention. Sasuke looked at Naruto dully. "Hey, Sasuke. You know… You're a bastard, but you really mean a lot to me. I'm so happy you're back, though I have no idea what you could be thinking or why you're here or…anything, really. I'm just…so happy that you're here with me again. I hope you stay here, even if it means I never know why you're here. Sasuke…?"

Sasuke's eerie smile had returned, intensifying his eyes.

"You're my best friend, no matter what happened between us. Please don't ever betray me—or the village—or…or anyone else—again."

Sasuke smiled like he was going to laugh. It was an expression Naruto had never seen on his face before, and, in that moment, he wished never to see it again.

He had planned on saying more, but couldn't handle it any more, so he simply said. "That's all I really wanted to say. I hope someday, it'll be like the old days—but I don't know if that day will ever come. Even so, I'm glad you're back. I'm happy."

A crow flew past the window, and Sasuke laughed silently to himself.

Naruto left the room shaking.

---

So, Sasuke was crazy. Naruto deduced that much, but he didn't particularly know what to do with this information. Should he call Sakura over? She, no doubt, would be as conflicted between many emotions as he was, if not more so. Kakashi? He didn't know what Kakashi could do, but considered telling him anyway. Tsunade? No way. Sasuke was a criminal and a danger to the village, technically. Many of his closer friends had been seriously injured chasing after Sasuke, and he didn't know what they'd do if they found out Sasuke's location.

For the second night in a row, Naruto hardly slept. He tossed and turned and had nightmares while he was still awake. A few times during the night, he clutched at the kunai pouch under his pillow, wondering if he'd have to use it at any point.

Naruto finally fell into fitful sleep at 6 AM, and that was when Sasuke snuck into the room (Naruto had forgotten to lock the door this time). He stood silently about Naruto's sleeping form for the longest time, stalking back and forth slowly. Naruto was a sound sleeper and tired to boot, numbing his senses to the boy that stood over his bed in silence—grinning like a demon or a hyena. Eventually Sasuke grew weary of standing around as he did, and he climbed on to the bed over Naruto—placing his face just above the face of the sleeping boy. He remained there for quite a while, his black hair dangling down to barely miss Naruto's face, and his face was close enough that Naruto could feel the stir of Sasuke's breath on his face.

Naruto awoke then and nearly panicked upon discovering Sasuke looming over him. "Sasu…ke?" he slurred groggily. "Sasuke, what are you doing?!" Naruto gathered himself to push Sasuke off of him and make a lunge for his weapons, but didn't get a chance. Sasuke leaned closer and closer, touched his lips briefly against Naruto's in something akin to a kiss, smiled like a Cheshire cat and whispered, "Wake up, Naruto…"

---

When Naruto awoke from the genjutsu, he was lying in the middle of a field with Sasuke holding a kunai to his throat. Rain poured down upon them like a torrent.

Surrounding the two of them was a whole flock of crows—and when Naruto hazarded a glance down at his body despite the kunai at his throat, he found that he was bloody and starving. His whole body was numb and his head was spinning with confusion and…a strange, psychological aching, but he couldn't help wondering how long he had been trapped in that genjutsu.

Stranger than the genjutsu, though—and stranger than the field, the crows, the fact that Sasuke had stolen him from his home to kill him—

Was the fact that Sasuke had tears in his eyes.

And as Naruto watched, helpless and barely able to move

Sasuke took the kunai off of Naruto's throat

and used it to slit his own.


End file.
